Visitation still not allowed in 82 percent fully vaccinated prisons - Turkey

Prioritizing public health or inhumane punishment?

While this article was written before the government announced the return to “open visitation” on December 1, its analysis of pandemic prison policies are still valid; prisoners have been neglected across the globe.

Turkish prison inmates have not been permitted “open visitation” for one year and eight months, despite the fact that the prison vaccination rate (82 percent) has surpassed that of the general population (78 percent), according to an article published by T24.

For almost two years, according to DW Turkish, inmates have only had access to 20 minutes of phone calls per week, increased from 10 minutes pre-pandemic. Prisons have recently begun to allow “closed visitation,” but the Justice Department suggests that this will not change for a while, “due to pandemic reasons.”

The Turkish prison system distinguishes between “open visitation” and “closed visitation” as contact visitation (where the inmate may sit in a room with their relatives or lawyer and sit at a table for a period of time) and non-contact glass-partition visitation (where the inmate and the lawyer/relative are separated by a glass partition and have to talk through a telephone.)

Not only is “open visitation” banned for inmates, but also any cross-prison transfers are currently at a halt. Transferring from high security prisons (which often use solitary confinement) to lower security prisons for good behavior, once motivation for inmate reformi is no longer possible. This might even mean that some have been in solitary confinement or similarly psychologically abusive situations for as long as these pandemic rules have been instated.

The contrast between the strict rules in prisons and travel for the general public is particularly striking. While Turkey has been in the process of returning to normal since about June, with lockdowns ending and restaurants, schools and hotels reopening, the fact that prisoners cannot even sit in a room with their relatives, and perhaps more importantly, their lawyers, is astonishing.

A similar critique can even be made about pre-June Turkey, when its restrictions (or lack thereof) on tourists seemed incomparable to those on its citizens. While Turkey’s citizens faced a lockdown on Sundays, and earlier in the pandemic before vaccinations, for consecutive weeks, tourists were exempted from any lockdown restrictions. Prisoners have therefore been a victim of Turkey’s inconsistent COVID-19 response ever since the beginning.

Many point to the fact that prisons are congregate housing facilities, with higher risks for COVID transmission at a much higher rate. Yet, the Anadolu Agency reports that Turkish nursing homes have had the right to allow visitations since around June, when the reopening period started. The Turkish government left this decision to the discretion of the nursing homes, many of which have decided to allow visitations with proof of visitors’ vaccinations and negative PCR test results.

Further, there is really little reason to justify the continued isolation of inmates despite a developed vaccination scheme such as the one observed in Turkey at the moment. While Turkish citizens can now travel internationally (and foreigners can travel to Turkey) as they wish with vaccinations and test results, inmates suffer, despite prisons’ higher vaccination and lower case rates.

Yet, is this a Turkey-specific issue as some would make it to be? How has the rest of the world dealt with congregate housing facilities and, particularly, prisons? The response varies, but it can be determined overall that many have unsurprisingly not prioritized prisoners in their pandemic response. With many which have had problems with prison visits, a shocking number of nations have little to no information available about their prison-visit protocols.

According to Buzzfeed, prisons in California only opened their doors to in-person visits around July, following months of telephone and video visits through a platform that faced frequent and significant crashes. According to its official website, the United Kingdom government has set up a “National Framework for Prisons” by which prisons have been classified as open or closed to visits based on their current vaccination and case rights, allowing for there to be a dynamic, updated, and rational system for prisons to receive visitors. The EuroPris website, which has stated that it will be “updated every day,” posted its most recent “Prison Visits” update on its COVID-19 information page in May 2020.

Concurrent with many questions surrounding the ethics of prisons in debate around the world, the pandemic has made it especially evident that prisoners are too often neglected by the government in times of crisis. The humanity of inmates are too often forgotten in policies about people who have been portrayed as criminals with no remorse. No person deserves no visits or no contact for a year and eight months, and governments across the world need to develop their schemes on including all of the nation’s public when specifying pandemic responses.

- Ayse Lara Selcuker